NPM 2020.2 Release Notes
Release date: June 4, 2020
These release notes describe the new features, improvements, and fixed issues in Network Performance Monitor 2020.2. They also provide information about upgrades and describe workarounds for known issues.
If you are looking for previous release notes for Network Performance Monitor, see Previous Version documentation.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITY: Tips and Tricks for upgrading to the latest version of NPM. Anyone upgrading to the newest version of NPM will benefit from this training.
For NPM environment requirements, see NPM 2020.2 System Requirements.
These release notes provide the following details:
- New features and improvements in NPM
- New features and improvements in Orion Platform 2020.2
- New customer installation
- How to upgrade
- Fixed issues
- Known issues
- End of life
- Deprecation notices
- Legal notices
For more details, see the NPM 2020.2 Administrator Guide.
New features and improvements in NPM
NPM 2020.2 offers the following new features and improvements compared to previous releases of NPM.
NPM 2020.2 is an Orion Platform product, and runs on Orion Platform 2020.2.
Monitor Azure cloud with NPM
Add a Microsoft Azure cloud account to NPM and monitor traffic on Azure Network Gateways and Site-to-Site Connections.
Update your MIB database from the Orion Web Console
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NPM 2020.2 brings improved integration of the MIB database into the Orion Web Console. You can check your current version of the MIB database, find out whether a newer version is available, and download the latest version directly from the Orion Web Console.
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The MIB Browser in the Orion Web Console now informs you that you don't have the latest MIB database. You can go to the MIBs Management page and download the latest version from there.
Device View improvements
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You can visually display Cisco switch stacks and Cisco Catalyst 3750 switches on the Device View.
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Use the improved filtering options, such as filtering by status or VLANs, and customize values to be displayed for filtering to only see the frequently used filters.
Other improvements
Historical data for interfaces were migrated to use TimeSeries, thus improving the performance of the Orion Web Console.
Advanced configuration was moved to Centralized Settings.
New features and improvements in Orion Platform 2020.2
For details about new features in Orion Platform 2020.2, go to Orion Platform 2020.2 Release Notes.
Orion Platform 2020.2 offers the following new features and improvements:
- Monitor up to 1,000,000 elements per Orion Platform instance.
- Orion Maps improvements, such as creating and customizing text boxes, labels, or layouts, incorporating custom icons, adding shapes, dynamic backgrounds and bulk administration
- Performance enhancements
- New Custom Summary Dashboards
- Upgrade improvements, such as pre-staging upgrades, upgrade plan reports, automating upgrades via Orion SDK
- Enhanced volume status
- 3rd Party Language Pack Support - scripts to extract UI texts from the Orion Web Console
» Learn more in the Orion Platform 2020.2 Administrator Guide
New customer installation
For information about installing Network Performance Monitor, see help for the SolarWinds Orion Installer.
How to upgrade
Use the SolarWinds Orion Installer to upgrade your entire Orion deployment (all Orion Platform products and any scalability engines).
If you are upgrading from NPM 12.5 or later, you can upgrade your entire Orion deployment from the My Orion Deployment page (Settings > My Orion Deployment). Downloading the Orion Installer is no longer necessary.
For details, see Install or upgrade Orion Platform products.
Fixed issues
NPM 2020.2 fixes the following issues.
| Case Number | Description |
|---|---|
|
473622 |
The issue where the Percent Utilization - Real Time Data chart used Interface Max Bandwidth instead of defined bandwidth was addressed. |
| 420334 | SolarWinds addressed the issue where Palo Alto polling was enabled for non-Palo Alto nodes. |
| 407233, 426362, 435485, 443039 | The issue where network wide availability charts didn't load was addressed. |
| 364981, 384717, 418131, 431135 | The issue where removing one interface opened a new database connection pool was resolved. |
| 368060 | Issues with disabling the Interface Data Obsolete feature were addressed. |
| 365540 | You can now use variables in map names for groups. |
| 174850, 374926 | Database performance issues caused by deadlocks in wireless tables were addressed. |
| 333531 | SolarWinds addressed an issue where customizations in Calculation.cfg file were reset after upgrade. |
| 307222, 372614 | SolarWinds addressed issues where UnDP table transformations did not work when the poller was assigned to multiple nodes. |
| 083403, 352831 | The issue where F5 LTM virtual servers reported unknown status although they were up was addressed. |
| 352627 | SolarWinds addressed an issue where custom SQL alerts were not triggered when custom poller was used as NetObject. |
See also Orion Platform 2020.2 Release Notes.
Known issues
| 414074 / False positive ASA alerts after change to Daylight Savings Time |
|---|
| Issue: When ASA devices use NTP and you have the Daylight Savings Time enabled, false positive Failover on ASA Firewall alerts might trigger when the devices set clock one hour back in autumn. |
|
Resolution/Work-around:
|
| Error rendering in the Possible Duplex Mismatches widget |
|---|
| Issue: When duplex matches occur on a node, the Possible Duplex Mismatches widget displays a rendering error. |
|
Resolution/Work-around: No workaround at the moment. SolarWinds is working on resolving this issue in a future version. |
End of life
| Version | EOL Announcements | EOE Effective Dates | EOL Effective Dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12.2 | September 6, 2019: End-of-Life (EoL) announcement – Customers on NPM version 12.2 should begin transitioning to the latest version of NPM. | December 6, 2019: End-of-Engineering (EoE) – Service releases, bug fixes, workarounds, and service packs for NPM version 12.2 will no longer be actively supported by SolarWinds. | December 6, 2020: End-of-Life (EoL) – SolarWinds will no longer provide technical support for NPM version 12.2. |
See the End of Life Policy for information about SolarWinds product lifecycle phases. For supported versions and EoL announcements for all SolarWinds products, see Currently supported software versions.
Deprecation notices
Deprecated platforms and features are still supported in the current release. However, they will be unsupported in a future release. Plan on upgrading deprecated platforms, and avoid using deprecated features. Customizations applied to a deprecated feature might not be migrated if a new feature replaces the deprecated one.
See Deprecation notices for Orion Platform 2020.2 to learn about currently deprecated features for the Platform, such as Orion Report Writer, or Network Atlas.
For information about supported versions of SolarWinds products, see Currently supported software versions.
Legal notices
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